Mitch McConnell told us why he prefers working with Joe Biden over Barack Obama

Vice President Joe Biden has an unlikely fan in the Senate – at least when it comes to negotiating.

During an interview with Business Insider last week to promote his newly released memoir, “The Long Game,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell explained why he preferred working with Biden to President Barack Obama.

“The guy to negotiate with in the administration was the vice president and not the president,” McConnell said. “He didn’t waste any time trying to convince me of things I didn’t believe in, and I didn’t try to convince him either.”

McConnell said the president, whom he referred to as “Professor Obama” in his memoir, needlessly lectured him about his viewpoints when they’d sit down to negotiate, something he called “grating and irritating.”

Later conceding that Obama is “a very smart guy,” he gave the president credit for designating Biden to take a lead role in some major negotiations, such as extending the George W. Bush tax cuts and the debt ceiling.

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Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Mitch McConnell earlier this year.

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AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

“With Biden you didn’t waste a lot of time on things we knew we would never agree on,” McConnell said. “I didn’t lecture him, he didn’t lecture me, we got down to the areas where there was possible agreement and we were able to get to an outcome – a very different experience from being in a negotiating setting with the president.”

Asked whether Biden could’ve won the Democratic presidential nomination had he entered the race, McConnell declined to offer any prediction.